TOWN councillors agreed to spend around £1,500 to make sure the council adhered to the new data protection rules.

The General Data Protection Regulation's strict new rules around protecting customer data comes into force on May 25.

Ross-on-Wye Town Council will need to adhere to the new rules, as do other councils, and at Monday night's meeting councillors were asked to approve expenditure.

The first recommendation to approve a cost of £702 plus vat for Logiplex to arrange provision of bespoke town council emails was objected to.

Coun Julian Utting said: "First of all £702 to pay for the provision of 18 emails is quite expensive in terms of what it takes to do it. I think we should go back and challenge them on that and reduce it to less than £500, which is more than enough for that."

The clerk, Sarah Robson, said she had asked Logiplex for a quote because they are the council's IT provider but said she would look elsewhere.

However, councillors agreed on the other recommendations which included £820 to engage Mircoshade VSM to undertake a Data Protection audit and provide the relevant policies etc, £495 a year for a Data Protection Officer, and £200 plus expenses for a GDPR training session for councillors and staff.